Godwin Dzah Interview

Briefly introduced about the purpose of the interview and thanked the interviewer Mr. Godwin Dzah for his time. The interview began with a very interesting comment by Mr. Godwin on how he regarded himself as a citizen of the world. One of the traits of an individual who has travelled across the globe. He continued on with the introduction and mentioned apart from being a global citizen he is a Gahanna national. He had some bits of experience in North America especially Canada and America. Godwin expressed his professional interest as being a lawyer and development professional. He described his law practice to be more general including criminal and civil however his work as a development professional is more exclusively on natural resource …show more content…
Godwin described an experience he had during one of his visits to Tarkwa, one of the main sites for mining in Ghana. He had gone there as a part of his field visit. The Tarkwa township is relatively in the countryside and people living in these regions are indigent. Godwin and his colleagues were trying to get some water from the local tap when they noticed the colour of water was brown. In the interview he mentioned that seeing the dark water from the piper was very disturbing. They decided to check on the water source and walked up hill where the water source was situated. Godwin was shocked to find that near the drinking water source there was a huge mining plant. There he saw people (gangs of people) mining along with foreign participation. He explains this as a classical example of tragedies of mining in Africa. Godwin offered to show me photographs of two rivers of Ghana River Ankobra and River Pra ten years ago and two years ago to show extensively the rivers have been damaged by mining activities. He mentioned these mining to be illegal and unregulated. Godwin explained that ‘unregulated mines ‘means mining activities not allowed near water source. In case of illegal mining activities, they are legal but the extend of cleaning up processes are not managed. I was intrigued to know about …show more content…
I asked Godwin what were the reasons that is hindering the process of the charter getting adapted in Africa. Godwin mentioned that there are three reasons for this (1) lack of technical expertise. He explained this reason briefly and mentioned that identification of environmental issues is a scientific problem and many times these environmental problems in Africa are not well recognized. With lack of expertise there is a need to borrow expertise from outside. Second reason is in itself is the newest countries in the race to establish themselves in Africa like China, India etc while Europe and America already in the market. He added that this has led to greater demand for resources and demand side of graph is increasing. Third reason that most of environmental laws in African countries are very old and haven’t properly being amended. Towards the end he explained how the reason one is closely connected to the vicious cycle of hiring experts from West and these days from India who have vested interests in exploiting African natural resources. These experts represent countries interested in trashing their waste in Africa and carry out extractive mining. So how can African’s be sure that the advice from these experts are useful or necessary for them. So these are three gaps why the charter is still not developed and implemented in